


Just Like Ol' King Kong

by GloriaMundi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Dinosaurs, Gen, Tall Tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 02:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5030320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky recounts an incident from his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Like Ol' King Kong

"...so you know King Kong?"

"Yeah, Buck: remember, we saw it at the Palace that time."

"Oh," says Bucky, as if he's been robbed of the chance to recount the plot to Steve. No doubt with himself in the role of Carl Denham. Steve hasn't figured out yet how come Bucky can recite the plot of every crappy B-movie they ever say, but can't remember where he put the sugar, or whether he was the guy who killed JFK. Sam would probably know. 

"So, you know there were all the dinosaurs?" 

"Yeah," says Steve. thinking of the murals in the Natural History Museum. "They were pretty cool." 

"There was this one time," says Bucky, and now he sounds like the kids on TV. "This one time out in ... I forget where. China, maybe. It was cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey. An' they had me ... I was there to ..." He breaks off, pinches the bridge of his nose, sighs fit to start a hurricane. "I dunno. But there was this fuckin' Tyrannosaurus, Steve, twenty foot tall if it was an inch, and it chowed down on one of the techs -- guy called Balodis, came from Latvia, breath like dogshit -- and was just, y'know, rampagin' round an' causin' mayhem." 

"Okaaaay," says Steve. He has no idea where this came from. None at all. The last movie they watched together was E.T. 

"So there's this damn dinosaur roaring and stomping and going for anyone it set eyes on. An I guess it took a shine to my arm." Bucky elbows Steve with said appendage. "Shine, huh?" 

"Jerk," says Steve fondly. 

"So it's after me, an' I'm just back from ... from somewhere. From town! Yeah, I must've gone into town to pick something up. And lucky for me I had my rifle -- a Dragunov, but I'd gotten her the way I liked her, all smooth and slick and easy -- but I swear I unloaded every round I had and the damned thing just kept on comin'. So I looked around, and -- hey, China (I think it was China) is kinda flat, y'know? And empty. And fucking cold. Nowhere to hide. But there was some kind of -- yeah, that's what it was, it must've been the truck we came in on. Driver was dead at the wheel, or half of him anyways: guess the other half got ate. So I get myself up onto the roof, and that big damn lizard is comin' right at me, an' -- Steve? Stevie? Don't fall asleep on me, hey?" 

"Not asleep!" Steve protests. "Just visualising the scene." As it happens, he's read the report of that mission in China, translated from the Russian by Natalia Romanova. 

"Good, 'cause I'm just gettin' to the good bit. So, it's freezing cold, getting dark, I'm all on my own 'cause the techs and the soldiers are all dino-dinner, an' I'm perched on top of this damn truck with the monster coming for me. Its slavering jaws!" Fuck, he sounds like Orson Welles. "Shreds of human flesh hanging from its razor-sharp talons! An' the look in its eye, Stevie: I knew that monster meant to have me too. So what d'you think I did?" 

You'd already killed your whole team, Steve doesn't say. You'd had some sort of glitch or breakdown -- or, hell, you'd woken up for a moment and realised you were in Hell -- and you'd killed them all, some with your bare hands. Rampaging around and causing mayhem. "I wish you'd just run, Buck," he says. "But I'm guessing --" He keeps Bucky in suspense, just a bit. "Nah," he says at last. "Dunno. How'd you get outta that one?" 

"I punched that sucker's lights out," says Bucky, gesturing. (Steve ducks.) "Got 'im right on the side of the head. Thought about going for the jaws, like ol' King Kong, 'cause I don't reckon he'd've found the arm all that tasty. But nah, it was easier to just hit him til he fell over -- that was one hell of a crash, Stevie, I gotta say -- an' then I leapt back down and finished the job. I was covered in blood when they came for me. Drenched in it. Stank like the abattoir on a Friday night." 

"That is --" a kinder story than the truth, thinks Steve. A story you made up to make sense of a few fragments. A pretty good metaphor for what you did, what we did, what we're doing to Hydra. "That's amazing, Buck. You should go into movies, y'know. "

"You reckon?" says Bucky.

"Yeah," says Steve. "You're a natural. I bet they could make a whole set of movies about you."

**Author's Note:**

> Suspect this was inspired by [osprey_archer's 'Reciprocity' series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/161309), which you should read if you have not.


End file.
